Assembly

[zlander79]

I am really interested in seeing what all the SMID instructions available for today's CPUs can do for the types of things I work with. However, I need to walk before I run, what is a good starting point for learning assembly.

[WordMasterRice]

I'm rather surprised no one has posted in this thread. When I started in assembly I started with Motorola actually (on a 68000). Then I learned Atmel assembly (AVR). They were very similar, as most basic assembly languages are. I would recommend starting with the Atmel package. It isn't terribly difficult to learn and is definitely more up to date than the motorola pack.

As for what to actually do with it, assembly is something that takes quite a while to learn to do properly (IMO). Since the basic instructions are rather different from regular programming languages of today it requires an entirely different mindset to write programs. If you would like some actual exercises let me know and I can give you some of the material that I have.

[zlander79]

I'm learining x86_64 with NASM right now. It really does require a different mindset, and it makes C feel like Python. I'm enjoying it so far. I'd love to see the material you have.

Here's one of the things I've written so far:

;**********************************************
; DIRECTIVES AND ECT
;**********************************************

[BITS 64]
DEFAULT REL


;**********************************************
; DATA SECTION
;**********************************************
         
          SECTION .data align=64
   
    msg:  db       "COUNTS FROM 0 TO 100"
    msg2: db       "ADDED! "
    len:      equ  $-msg
    len2:     equ  $-msg2
    a:    dq       0       ; start at
    b:    dq       1       ; increase by
    c:    dq       100     ; increase till
    lenv:     equ  $-c    ;length of value print
         

;**********************************************
; TEXT SECTION
;********************************************** 
         
          SECTION .text align=64
          global main

main:  
        mov    rdx, len  ;print welcome message
        mov    rcx, msg
        mov    rbx, 1
        mov    rax, 4
        int    0x80
                          
        jmp    whlp      ;call loop

whlp:
        mov    rdx, len2    ;print
        mov    rcx, msg2
        mov    rbx, 1
        mov    rax, 4
        int    0x80
        
        mov    rax, [a]   ;compare and exit if equal
        cmp    rax, [c]
        je     done
        mov    rax, [a]   ;add b to a
        mov    rbx, [b]
        add    rax, rbx
        mov    [a], rax
        jmp    whlp

done:
        mov    rbx, 0
        mov    rax, 1
        int    0x80